Not seeing anything that makes Druid attractive to a Ranger that doesn’t want to be a healslave. Read: Most Rangers. The spec is still missing offensive functionality. At least the other specs got lines of traits dedicates to different roles. If that were the case for Druid it’d have a major, master, and grandmaster trait each dedicated to offense. Instead it’s still almost entirely heal, support, heal, and more support. What other profession got told to not bother with their elite spec if they weren’t part of the minority wanting into a support niche that’s mostly only useful in high level content?

This spec seems to be 150% crammed into one tiny design element with only cursory consideration for the roles the majority of Rangers actually play. All but ONE Ranger I know in-game is switching to Guardian already because DH does more of what they wished Ranger did.

Tasao, the druid traits are definitely not 100% support. The druid trait lines can be broken down into Self Sustain (Druidic Clarity, Live Vicariously, Celestial Shadow, Verdant Etching), Control (Primal Echoes, Ancient Seeds), and Heal Support (Cultivated Synergy, Natural Mender, Lingering Light, Grace of the Land). With Natural Stride as a very strong mobility trait.

And now Grace of the Land is actually a raw group DPS boost through healing and Lingering Light offers more defensive support by letting those you heal apply blinds.

For offensive rangers the druid line can be used as a sustain line, which you need in PVP regardless. Doing so gives you perma out of combat swiftness or access to stealth every 10 seconds, good condition management, and good options to pin a target down via turning your dazes into immobilizes. This is in addition to burst healing that can keep both yourself and allies alive when you need it.

If all you see when looking at druid is healing you’re not looking very closely.

Irenio! <3 It’s looking great! Thank you so much for letting us know things today. ^.^

The only issue I will hope to have cleared is how celestial avatar form skill 1 works. It’s really. . . hard to use.

I’m glad that the base healing has been reduced but is it really enough? I mean, Druid in BWE3 could really do a ton of healing even in Berzerker’s gear, i feel like by reducing the base healing by such a small amount Druid will still be able to keep everyone safe in zerker gear. If that turns out to be correct (when we finally get to see the changes on the 23rd) what is the point of playing in Healing power gear? Even if it does much more healing, zerker druid will still be able to save his teammates and do more damage. There will be two kinds of Rangers, the ones who want to do damage and the ones that want to heal. I don’t want to see a zerker Ranger specialized as Druid that can do really high damage and a satisfying amount of healing. I think it’s great that a Ranger can be damage or healer (as Druid) but not both at once.

It does address quite a lot of our concerns. Also the heal reduction is acceptable for non healer builds, and healer builds will be even better then in BWE3. I am happy.

Irenio, thank you for giving us a preview of the upcoming changes. I’m really happy you’re addressing Druid’s lack of DPS, and I think Grace of the Land and Glyph of Empowerment will go a long way to making Druid a useful, versatile member of raid parties. The changes for Ancestral Grace are also very welcome. I would also like to thank you for leaving the base heals at a solid level—this really helps open up hybrid options for Druid!

I do have a couple quibbles with some of the changes you’ve made, though.

• Glyph of Alignment: While I like the 2s increase on the Cripple and Weakness, the damage reduction in favor of 3 stacks of poison is… not ideal. Rangers already have very good access to condition-oriented PBAoEs in the form of traps. Specifically, the changes to Glyph of Alignment tread on the toes of Viper’s Nest— which is far superior for condition builds due to its poison field. Please revert the base damage back to BWE3 levels and nix the poison. Consider adding boon support (some short-duration stability or protection would be very welcome!), a stunbreak, or a blast finisher to Glyph of Alignment instead to make it more useful.

• Celestial Avatar Form: I would prefer if Celestial Avatar Form regenerated at a base rate, like Endurance or Energy, and nix the Astral Force gain on healing/damage altogether. Make Astral Force drain fully on exit and take 10s to recharge. I know this doesn’t fit with your vision for Druid, but it is a QoL change that streamlines the CAF mechanic and prevents exploitation. This also helps differentiate it from Necromancer’s Shroud.

• Glyph of Unity: While I love the base/leash radius increase, I still feel like this elite needs a little…more. Adding some form of damage mitigation to this skill would be very welcome, since its effectiveness is 100% dependent upon the Druid taking damage. Stability would also be a great choice, since we have to give up our strongest stability skill (“Strength of the Pack!”) to slot in Glyph of Unity.

Thanks again for updating us, Irenio. I really hope you keep us in the loop in the future as well!

Irenio CalmonHuang.2048:

Hey all,

Since the third beta weekend there’s been a lot of great feedback – thanks!

Below are some of the more solid changes to the Druid since the beta weekend that were made to address some concerns regarding net damage loss in a raid, celestial avatar form feeling gated by staff and glyph reward scaling.

• Grace of the Land: This trait has been re-worked. Instead of its former behavior, allies affected by your celestial avatar abilities gain 3% damage and condition damage increase for 8 seconds. This buff stacks 5 times.

• Lingering Light: This trait has been re-worked. Instead of its former behavior, when you heal an ally their next outgoing attack will heal them (based upon your healing) and blind their target.

• Glyph of Unity: This skill now has a 400 initial effect radius and a 600 radius leash.

• Glyph of Empowerment: The radius for this skill has been increased to 600.

• Glyph of Alignment: Increased the weakness and cripple duration on this skill from 3s to 5s. Reduced the cast damage by 66%. This skill now applies 3 stacks of poison.

• Ancestral Grace: Is now an evade and will immediately end upon reaching your destination.

• Celestial Avatar Form: Entering this form now has a 10s CD. Charging of Astral force by healing has been reduced by 40%. Charging of Astral force by outgoing strikes has been increased by 200%. You now retain half your current astral force if you decide to break form early.

• Celestial Avatar Form: Skills that heal have had their base heals reduced by 15-25% and increased their healing coefficients from 100-145%. This should leave base heals solid while really rewarding players who elect to use healing power stats.

• (Celestial Avatar) Lunar Impact: Reduced the daze on this skill from 3s to 2s. This skill is now ground targeted and will blast finish correctly.

Well wishes,
~Irenio

Bonus: Bristleback Pet F2 is no longer the Sharpen Spines ability. The F2 is now Spike Barrage to give you more rewarding control.

All great changes except Lingering Light. If it has no icd then it’s basically a passive 15% damage increase for the group, basically making druid mandatory for meta like chronomancer. To make a conparison, this trait alone is strong as 2 warrior banners. It should be 1% per stack or have icd so that it stacks only with more druids

Uh how is there a lack of synergy? Jesus

This puts us in a great place for support other then healing. 7,5% from spirit, 10% from glyph and up to 15% from Grace for burn phases, along with spotter. WoW!!

Chokolata.1870:

Uh how is there a lack of synergy? Jesus

This puts us in a great place for support other then healing. 7,5% from spirit, 10% from glyph and up to 15% from Grace for burn phases, along with spotter. WoW!!

Glyph is not 10%, it’s 3%. At least do your math. It’s basically 10%+spotter, which is nothing compared to a PSEA warrior giving the group 170 all stats, another 150 from empower allies, and then 25 permanent might to the group. So about 25% extra DPS for his group on top of being third place in DPS, sitting around 16k DPS.

There is no synergy between the druid line and other lines for PvE. You have a staff that does poor DPS and is healing centric but which derives no benefit from the other lines for being healing centric. Then you have the rest of our weapons, which are power/condi based and derive no benefit from the druid traitline considering both minors revolve around healing procs (which none of the non-staff weapons do), and both the adept and grandmasters offer no benefit to our other weapons let alone mesh with an offensive DPS role. And a celestial form that does NOTHING for a non-healing specced ranger.

Druid is virtually a standalone specialization for PvE. At best you’ll be a hybrid, and hybrids in optimized PvE groups suck.

But hey, since core ranger also sucks for endgame PvE, it’s not like you’re losing much. Either way the class for those who wanted to play a DPS profession is DEAD, and this is going live so enjoy your cleric staff guardian 2.0, god knows people loved those in PvE sarcasm.

And the glyphs still suck, with them nerfing the already mediocre damage of glyph of alignment and not fixing glyphs to be ground targeted for a spec whose main weapon is a ranged staff.

Looks good so far.

Glyph is 3% when you look at its overall up time. I am talking about the burn phases. Should have been more precise.

Not sure how meta will be in HoT, but if it stayed as it is now, Grace of the Land would be better off giving the whole 15% amount with the activation of avatar form for 8 seconds. That way you could use it in the beginning of the fight along with spotter, FS and glyph of empowerment for some real party burst boost.

Now about Glyph of Empowerment, I still think it needs another 5% damage boost and 5% healing reduction. That way it will stay on 15% dps or healing depending on your form.

kiwituatara.6053:

Levetty.1279:

Irenio CalmonHuang.2048:

Reduced the cast damage by 66%.

sure

why not

Actually just caught that. I’m hoping thats a typo and that he meant cast time. Don’t know what “cast damage” is :P

Not a typo. The skill does direct damage when you cast it. That damage got reduced by 66%.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Glyph_of_Alignment_

Irenio CalmonHuang.2048:

• Grace of the Land: This trait has been re-worked. Instead of its former behavior, allies affected by your celestial avatar abilities gain 3% damage and condition damage increase for 8 seconds. This buff stacks 5 times.

That will be something for raids. Grace of the Land, Frost Spirit, and Glyph of Empowerment combined should boost the damage of our allies more than enough to make up for the loss you have by bringing 1 or 2 Druid healers.

Irenio CalmonHuang.2048:

• Lingering Light: This trait has been re-worked. Instead of its former behavior, when you heal an ally their next outgoing attack will heal them (based upon your healing) and blind their target.

Aw, I liked how it worked before, since it was great for helping charge up CA in melee range of brawls and big fights.

Irenio CalmonHuang.2048:

• Glyph of Unity: This skill now has a 400 initial effect radius and a 600 radius leash.

Good stuff. Leash radius might need a small bump still, but we’ll see how it goes with this on the 23rd first.

Irenio CalmonHuang.2048:

• Glyph of Empowerment: The radius for this skill has been increased to 600.

Same as the above.

Irenio CalmonHuang.2048:

• Glyph of Alignment: Increased the weakness and cripple duration on this skill from 3s to 5s. Reduced the cast damage by 66%. This skill now applies 3 stacks of poison.

Not sure why the damage was nerfed. Wasn’t really that great, was it?

Irenio CalmonHuang.2048:

• Ancestral Grace: Is now an evade and will immediately end upon reaching your destination.

One of the most asked for changes. Thanks for getting us this. Only made sense considering how ranger has at least one evade skill on the majority of its weapons and this will help us get to allies for healing securely and/or out of trouble when it comes looking for us.

Irenio CalmonHuang.2048:

• Celestial Avatar Form: Entering this form now has a 10s CD. Charging of Astral force by healing has been reduced by 40%. Charging of Astral force by outgoing strikes has been increased by 200%. You now retain half your current astral force if you decide to break form early.

Uhm, okay? This is certainly going to bump the difficulty level of Druid a lot, especially for raids and whatnot.

Irenio CalmonHuang.2048:

• Celestial Avatar Form: Skills that heal have had their base heals reduced by 15-25% and increased their healing coefficients from 100-145%. This should leave base heals solid while really rewarding players who elect to use healing power stats.

Will have to see how that goes. Certainly sounds a lot better than a scaling coefficient of 0.5 or less. Hope it’s still viable with celestial gear/amulet.

Irenio CalmonHuang.2048:

• (Celestial Avatar) Lunar Impact: Reduced the daze on this skill from 3s to 2s. This skill is now ground targeted and will blast finish correctly.

Well, no surprise on the daze nerf, considering it’s insane synergy for MoC. At least the blast finisher will work now.

Irenio CalmonHuang.2048:

Bonus: Bristleback Pet F2 is no longer the Sharpen Spines ability. The F2 is now Spike Barrage to give you more rewarding control.

Great. So Sharpen Spines is swapped into the AI controlled skill set then or is it scrapped completely and replaced by a new 3rd skill for Godzilla Jr?

Photinous.4628:

Solid changes all around, but as long as Glyph’s don’t have a single stun break I will never use them. And no, the stunbreak while in celestial avatar form only does not count.

Seems Irenio dont like stunbreaks, same for engi with gyros there are also no stunbreaks

Nice changes overall. However, if healing isn’t giving as much Astral Energy, then I think the staff deserves some buffs on its scaling healing values like has been done to Celestial Form since the staff’s primary use was building up astral energy.

mistsim.2748:

Missed Opportunities for Later

• the huge problem you missed with the avatar is its #1. in BWE3, there was no point in casting it. i’d channel #4, then cast LI, spam a seed or two and cast NC…followed maybe by another LI. #1 cannot hit a moving ally, period. the cast time is too long, radius too small.*

This so hard. It really needs radius and/or cast time buffs. If they want it to stay as a more single-target heal, they can just change the target limit or have some other special functionality. At the moment there’s little reason to use this over any of the other skills because it’ll only ever hit if your targeted ally is literally rooted by something.

Great changes and QoL improvements!

Some people look too negatively at the avatar CD, 10 seconds seems fairm considering the energy will be now easier to build with other weapons, and we don’t lose all the energy if leaving CA.

And as you are obviously still working on changes-#2 is the most lacking ability on staff by far (probably the only lacking ability now).

Also please look into bristlbacks spike barrage-in the beta it had huge problems hiting moving targets-even slow moving ones.

One small bump to smoke scale would also be great. His active ability-add a slow pulsing blind to it, so it won’t be just usefull for blasting!

Thanks Irenio.

I am even more HYPE HYPED now.

hype.

mixed feelings. I mean the changes are ok, its mostly buffs. but theres just no offence anywhere – no dmg on staff (condi or power), no dmg whatsoever on avatar, no dmg in traits. its just heal, heal, heal, heal (no boons and very little support though). Ok it will work in raids, it will probably work in www. But theres just no synergy with the ranger to be useful in pvp or fractals/open world/dungeons/story.

You cant run a healer in 5-man pvp, you just cant, it will never work. Ranger is already the weakest pvp class by quite a margin and lots of other classes/builds are getting buffed with their spec. Ranger gets nothing from druid in pvp, add to that no changes to core weapons/specs for the foreseeable future- the gap to other classes widens further.

Give druid some offensive capabilities, give it some synergy with ranger specs/skills/weapons/pets. You scale the healing with healing power more now, no reason for such pitiful dmg output even when running offensive amulets.

What about Cosmic Ray? (https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Cosmic_Ray)

It needs a buff! Its cast time is a bit long, and so is the impact. In a raid everyone is running around and highly mobile. Its hard to target allies with the spell in order to get some good heals off. I suggest an increase to its radius atleast. 240? 200? Something other than 120.

concrete stuff

- new GMs ok

- glyphs are still bad, all of them. really hard to justify taking them over proper utilities. just simple and mediocre effects (daze, kb, mini dmg buff, 3 condis) – no class uses such utilities (most classes have them though – war physical, thief traps, ele glyphs). You need your utilities for stunbreaks, mobility, proper dmg mitigation, condi clears, gap closers, stability and ideally mixed in with a offensive side, those are the utilities that people actually use.

- Glyph of Empowerment was bad under optimal conditions (low uptime on 10% modifier), you just made it easier to reach optimal conditions, effect is still bad

- Ancestral grace change is great

- no stunbreaks at all and very bad condi clears (trait and use bad glyphs for delayed clear). Wilderness survival and at least 2-3 survival skills is still mandatory. Burning is always gonna kill you before those seeds blossom. Plus seeds have small range and its pretty hard to camp in them waiting for blossoming.

- lf something that does damage

After seeing these changes, I can finally make my mind of maining a Revenant.

Aside from raid, Revenant can do everything better while being the top dps.
It is also a 100% stronger class in PVP.

Druid will be a damage buff healer that’d try to stick in Avatar as long as possible, doing nothing other than giving out 15% damage bonus and healing. Not my type of play-style anyway, plus it is a useless build in PVP.

Don’t tell me you can be bunker Druid in PVP now. A real bunker will have high vit/toughness while keeping at least one aspect of offensive power. (condition mostly since it only need one trait to be strong)

Druid is pigeon-holed into healing, which no classes really grab it as their main stat. They’d have lower total stats to utilize. They’d have low vit, low toughness, and low damage.

Some really good changes in my opinion. Looks like Druid is going to be a mandatory class in raids.

A suggestion: The introduction of a cooldown to Celestial Avatar is a pretty significant nerf to the Celestial Shadow trait. To give it a bit more play options, maybe add a 20% reduction for the Celestial Avatar cooldown to the trait. It would give the trait an interesting play option and be totally in line with traits of other classes that reduce the cooldowns of class mechanics.

From a PvP perspective I am very happy there are no boons on Druid. Necromancers are pretty strong already and giving them more fuel for their boon corruption would just be silly.

Those are some really nice changes.

I’m a bit sad to see the wisp from Lingering Light go, but only for the loss of the theme. It’s a great change however.

I’d still like to see Astral Wisp (Staff 2) to become unblockable and maybe blind enemies it touches (like Lingering Light will). Solar Beam (Staff 1) is basically unblockable since it’s a beam, so it would make sense that Astral Wisp is unblockable as well. The same way Mesmer Mirror Blade (Greatsword 2) is unblockable and Spacial Surge (Greatsword 1) is also basically unblockable because it’s a beam.

To be honest I don’t think the tweaks to AF generation are good enough. Still doesn’t change the fact how certain skills give 10times the amount of other skills which is just stupid.

Please base this around the % of healing/dmg done instead of the number of idividual instances. There is no reason to make a skill like TU 10x better for druid than other heals, it reduces build variety. There is no reason that you can fill AF 10x better with a skill like Barrage than anything on for example Greatsword.

A good number for heals would be 0.0025% per healing. 400hp healed would generate 1% AF. Most of the healing skills heal you and your pet for about 7k to 10k each so it would generate between 40 and 50%.

Make this % based. The current implementation is incredibly flawed.

Tasao.4623:

Not seeing anything that makes Druid attractive to a Ranger that doesn’t want to be a healslave. Read: Most Rangers. The spec is still missing offensive functionality. At least the other specs got lines of traits dedicates to different roles. If that were the case for Druid it’d have a major, master, and grandmaster trait each dedicated to offense. Instead it’s still almost entirely heal, support, heal, and more support. What other profession got told to not bother with their elite spec if they weren’t part of the minority wanting into a support niche that’s mostly only useful in high level content?

This spec seems to be 150% crammed into one tiny design element with only cursory consideration for the roles the majority of Rangers actually play. All but ONE Ranger I know in-game is switching to Guardian already because DH does more of what they wished Ranger did.

The things the elite spec brings are:

Support

• healing
• condition removal
• damage buff (new Grace of the Land)

Control

• daze
• immobilize

Utility

• movement speed
• stealth

Yes it’s not a damage spec, but it has its uses.

I do agree it could use some more damage on Staff for when you’re on your own.

Thank you, Irenio.

runeblade.7514:

Irenio CalmonHuang.2048:

• Celestial Avatar Form: Skills that heal have had their base heals reduced by 15-25% and increased their healing coefficients from 100-145%. This should leave base heals solid while really rewarding players who elect to use healing power stats.

I dislike this.

And yet it is necessary.

I feel that this will make cleric druids way more tanky than it already is.

Zealot’s/Keeper’s is tanky?

As many of us suggested, the cd on celestial avatar is a step in the right direction. With this change maybe Ventari/Guardian/Ele is able to compete.
However that 15% aoe damage buff is HUGE. I hope it has at least a 8s gcd so that it can be stacked only with more then one Druid .
If it has a 4-8s gcd then it’s godly design, solving many issues at once (druid damage and druid redundance), otherwise it would just make Druid more mandatory (150 aoe precision + 15% damage buff….).

Shiren.9532:

It won’t be up 100% of the time and it requires the druid to be using Celestial form which is almost 100% healing. Unlike warrior banners, Grace of the Land requires the druid to stop attacking and start healing to provide its buff, but after eight seconds the buff begins to disappear. Warrior banners are passively maintained, Grace of the Land is actively maintained and comes at the expense of offensive actions. The trait offsets the DPS loss the party takes when the druid stops attacking to heal, but it likely won’t boost overall DPS by very much.

It’s likely druid will either be mandatory or so strong you will want one anyway, regardless of whether or not it’s strictly needed.

Lingering Light requires celestial form, that still has a 67% uptime (20s every 30s), that’s an average 10% damage buff for more then 5 people.
Also because you keep healing it’s not a problem keeping it up.
Compare it to other healers. Basically Ventari and Guardian in healing gear/build do 0 damage and do not have unique buffs (just normal boons).

Eirh.1439:

Some really good changes in my opinion. Looks like Druid is going to be a mandatory class in raids.

My money is that a mantra-heals Mesmer and several Guardian builds will be just as desirable in ‘the healer slot’. And definitely more desirable than a second Druid. Big green numbers are nice, but there’s a lot of secondary effects on the table for any serious/thoughtful discussion of raid composition.

New Grace of the land is pretty amazing and caters to what many have been asking for for Druid. My only issue is that it should possibly just grant might instead. In it’s current state I think it’ll be found too strong and end up being a must pick for Druids. Might application still fits the empowerment role, but does so in a way that’s limited by boon stacking, and can be countered with boon hate. It also has far better synergy with the boon duration from Nature Magic.

New Lingering Light is very nice, more reliable healing application and a blind at the cost of less AF generation. ICD will decide if this will shine or fade away though.

Ancestral Grace changes are very graceful. Looking forward to any other staff changes! Especially the animations!

Like the new CF changes. Tell me though, does seed of life still look bleh? What happened to the offensive addition to 4?

Glyph of Alignment seemed to loom pretty Autumny before. It was all orange leaves and woody spikes. Weakness and cripple seem perfect conditions to match those wilting visuals. Now the poison application makes me have to think about this effect being toxic. In its current state -visually- I’d prefer to keep it as a decent aoe damage and control spell instead of a condition damage one. We have traps for that.

One other skill I think could use some work visually is Sublime Conversion. The wall looks nice, but the flowery bush below looks like plastic. The mushrooms from Glyph of Alignment in CF could look nice in a line here. Instead of a fairy ring it’s like a fairy line. What happened to the unique effects we say in the livestream? Projectiles shot through the wall turned in to blue glowing arrow where they’re now just water.

Might generation is also completely uninteresting, because pretty much every other class already provides might like it was nothing and providing party wide 25 stacks is easy. Let things be strong for once, it won’t make druid a must pick in 5 man groups (although it will make it a decent pick) and if it’s optimal to use one druid in 10 man groups it shows that duid at least has a place in the game.

Irenio – First of all, Awesome changes. Thank you again.

Is there any chance that staff 1 could have burning added to it’s final pulse?

Also, did you consider reworking Cosmic Ray so that it’s more practical to use?

Irenio CalmonHuang.2048:

Hey all,

Since the third beta weekend there’s been a lot of great feedback – thanks!

Just looking at the changes that affect offensive/CC Druids like the Mad-Seed Druid

• Grace of the Land: This trait has been re-worked. Instead of its former behavior, allies affected by your celestial avatar abilities gain 3% damage and condition damage increase for 8 seconds. This buff stacks 5 times.

While of slight interest to offense-minded druids, this won’t displace Ancient Seed as the core of the Mad-Seed build.

• Glyph of Alignment: Increased the weakness and cripple duration on this skill from 3s to 5s. Reduced the cast damage by 66%. This skill now applies 3 stacks of poison.

Nice. A great change for hybrid or hybrid-leaning-towards-condi builds. More poison gives more coverage to the bleeds.

• Celestial Avatar Form: Entering this form now has a 10s CD. Charging of Astral force by healing has been reduced by 40%. Charging of Astral force by outgoing strikes has been increased by 200%. You now retain half your current astral force if you decide to break form early.

This is glorious for offensive Druids, especially with Druidic Clarity as a condition wipe. 10 second cooldown for full condi-wipe while keeping half your astral force as you leave the formal almost as soon as possible in many cases? Yes, yes, and YES.

Soon… Soon it will be harvest time…

kleym.2340

- Celestial Shadow: Re-work this trait when leaving celestial avatar form (if you put stealth to allies in a point its a fail, because the enemies decap your point when you leave the celestial avatar form, “in teamfights you cant leave the celestial avatar form with this trait”)

This trait is fine. If you don’t want stealth, don’t take this trait.

Your other changes would make druid pretty op …

UmbraNoctis.1907:

kleym.2340

- Celestial Shadow: Re-work this trait when leaving celestial avatar form (if you put stealth to allies in a point its a fail, because the enemies decap your point when you leave the celestial avatar form, “in teamfights you cant leave the celestial avatar form with this trait”)

This trait is fine. If you don’t want stealth, don’t take this trait.

Your other changes would make druid pretty op …

I put improvements, anet gets the ideas that you like

love the changes.

my favorite part is that you can dramatically vary how a druid supports just depending on your trait choices. this sort of thing is an ideal use of traits.

I do echo comments about CA #1 though – its sooooo awkward…..

Irenio CalmonHuang.2048:

Hey all,

Since the third beta weekend there’s been a lot of great feedback – thanks!

Below are some of the more solid changes to the Druid since the beta weekend that were made to address some concerns regarding net damage loss in a raid, celestial avatar form feeling gated by staff and glyph reward scaling.

• Grace of the Land: This trait has been re-worked. Instead of its former behavior, allies affected by your celestial avatar abilities gain 3% damage and condition damage increase for 8 seconds. This buff stacks 5 times.

• Lingering Light: This trait has been re-worked. Instead of its former behavior, when you heal an ally their next outgoing attack will heal them (based upon your healing) and blind their target.

• Glyph of Unity: This skill now has a 400 initial effect radius and a 600 radius leash.

• Glyph of Empowerment: The radius for this skill has been increased to 600.

• Glyph of Alignment: Increased the weakness and cripple duration on this skill from 3s to 5s. Reduced the cast damage by 66%. This skill now applies 3 stacks of poison.

• Ancestral Grace: Is now an evade and will immediately end upon reaching your destination.

• Celestial Avatar Form: Entering this form now has a 10s CD. Charging of Astral force by healing has been reduced by 40%. Charging of Astral force by outgoing strikes has been increased by 200%. You now retain half your current astral force if you decide to break form early.

• Celestial Avatar Form: Skills that heal have had their base heals reduced by 15-25% and increased their healing coefficients from 100-145%. This should leave base heals solid while really rewarding players who elect to use healing power stats.

• (Celestial Avatar) Lunar Impact: Reduced the daze on this skill from 3s to 2s. This skill is now ground targeted and will blast finish correctly.

Well wishes,
~Irenio

Bonus: Bristleback Pet F2 is no longer the Sharpen Spines ability. The F2 is now Spike Barrage to give you more rewarding control.

I really like these changes, but more are needed, a lot more.

GoTL is a fantastic change and makes Druid much more desirable. So kitten good!

Lingering Light reminds me of Paragon, so I love that aspect of it. Nice!

GoU, all improvements, 600 range is pretty good.

GoE, the range increase made this skill usable, nice change.

GoA, extending the condition durations was good as was the poison application, depending on duration. It didn’t do massive damage so I do not know why that was reduced so heavily.

Ancestral Grace, a change that was asked for by quite a few and made happen, awesome work, its now an excellent skill.

Changes to CAF healing, yet to be seen but looks like it should be fine, healing power investment is desirable.

LI change, that was always going to happen. Could we get the cast time chopped back so we can use it as an interrupt? Also, why the ground targeting? 1/4s cast and PBAoE would be fantastic.

The change to the Bristleback is a great one too.

I suggest several things that can be looked at before launch.

• Add a 0.5s burn to each pulse of Solar Beam
• Remove the Daze from Primal Echoes, replace it with Natural Mender and place the daze into the GM minor slot, working with any weapon swap. This makes Druid much more diverse and non healing builds are not wasting their GM minor trait.
• Add a stun break to GoTT
• Add stability to CAF when entering the form.
• CAF #1 could just be a non-ground targeted AoE damage skill, it seems very difficult to actually land on people and it has zero utility.

A bug to fix, Enlargement and SoTW should not drop CAF, since they are 2/3 of our stability sources, something greatly needed when in CAF.

Overall, great changes.

-Grace of the Land: very great buff and push the druid a bit more toward support and not just heal. This might even make the Druid meta for dungeons fractals.
-Lingering Light: need to see in game, the wisp was a great generator of Astral Force and I hope that new heal will generate AF as well.
-Ancestral Grace: things that were needed, good.
-Celestial Avatar: 10s CD was obviously coming, it will help not making the druid a spamming brainless bot.
-Astral Force: with the 10s ICD, the changes shouldn’t matter much in group, CF will probably be available before 10s provided you use the right weapon or buff.
-Healing values: not bad, it makes H.power better while not requiring an as big amount as before.
-Lunar Impact: another thing I saw coming, 6s daze with moment of clarity (not counting mesmer runes…) was obviously strong.
-Glyphs: didn’t use them so I won’t comment.

I wouldn’t mind some damages on Cosmic Ray, even low, for the purpose of mobs/players tagging. It would help a lot.

These are excellent changes, though I hope there are no major nerfs you’re keeping from us until the 23rd. Celestial Avatar is now balanced for different playstyles and will reward players for investing in healing power. The only thing I would ask is you consider adding some stability when entering CA, even if for a short duration. Personally, I wouldn’t mind additional cooldown if you can offer 3 stacks/3 seconds of stability on entering CA.

Stilgar.6437:

Give druid some offensive capabilities, give it some synergy with ranger specs/skills/weapons/pets. You scale the healing with healing power more now, no reason for such pitiful dmg output even when running offensive amulets.

Yeah I have no idea why they don’t use scaling more to allow the same skill to give multiple roles depending on how you are geared. Instead they just use it to make healing and damage amounts more complicated then they need to.

Also Ancient seeds needs its icd to be per person.

Before we decide on glyphs, we should wait to see what changes to seed of life (irenio said they were going to do something with it) and verdent etching irenio has implemented.

i did some math about the CAF changes
" increased their healing coefficients from 100-145%". I understand that line like “every coeff gets +45%” or " coeff*1,45"

so i used this formula and the base heal nerf numbers to find a range where we can estimate our heals with release
I just used the 4 possible amulett stats in PvP (0, 560, 900, 1200)
My solution: Only SoL gets better and the other ones get a slight nerf

CR at 1200HP after release will be around 20-100 weaker – nothing to worry
SoL at 1200HP will be 150-200 stronger
LI at 1200HP will be 170-400 weaker
RT at 1200HP will be 60-170 weaker (per tick)

Some may cry “QQ nurf, i thought we will get even more healing when we invest in HP and such”
But they are reasonable and we get something extra. SoL will heal around 12xx with cleric amulett and we probably get a new effect on it, maybe a useful boon (screw swiftness, fury or one stack might), i think thats sweet

GotL change is poor, i will miss this trait, i couldnt test it, while it is more activ game play than all the passive stuff the pvp community hates, i think it was an awesome trait in a game where mesmer can spam ez confu and torment as they like and burn stacks tick so high, that even u scream.
PvP wise a nerf, raid wise a must-have now – a good buff

Irenio CalmonHuang.2048:

• Grace of the Land: This trait has been re-worked. Instead of its former behavior, allies affected by your celestial avatar abilities gain 3% damage and condition damage increase for 8 seconds. This buff stacks 5 times.

Why is this the only % multiplier trait in the game that affects both damage and condition damage? Surely this should be extended to other profession % multipliers as well?

Pretty annoying now that I think about it.

Irenio CalmonHuang.2048:

• Glyph of Unity: This skill now has a 400 initial effect radius and a 600 radius leash.

Please let me heal players when I am healing myself in Cele form Glyph of unity.

This would make a great non-clunky party heal in return of less heal.

Bacon.1835:

Irenio CalmonHuang.2048:

• Grace of the Land: This trait has been re-worked. Instead of its former behavior, allies affected by your celestial avatar abilities gain 3% damage and condition damage increase for 8 seconds. This buff stacks 5 times.

Why is this the only % multiplier trait in the game that affects both damage and condition damage? Surely this should be extended to other profession % multipliers as well?

Pretty annoying now that I think about it.

Its fair considering that the Druid will not be able to DPS while in Cele form.

Bacon.1835:

Irenio CalmonHuang.2048:

• Grace of the Land: This trait has been re-worked. Instead of its former behavior, allies affected by your celestial avatar abilities gain 3% damage and condition damage increase for 8 seconds. This buff stacks 5 times.

Why is this the only % multiplier trait in the game that affects both damage and condition damage? Surely this should be extended to other profession % multipliers as well?

Pretty annoying now that I think about it.

Lol. That was fast. One class has something my class doesnt have, i want now!

" increased their healing coefficients from 100-145%". I understand that line like “every coeff gets +45%” or " coeff*1,45"

i’m pretty sure it’s actually from *2.00 to *2.45, but i guess we’ll see.

…May the stars guide you!…

SUPERIOR RUNES OF THE DRUID

(1) +25 Healing Power
(2) Gain up to 400 Toughness while reviving an ally, based on your level.
(3) +50 Healing Power
(4) After using a healing skill you gain resistance for 3 seconds. (Cooldown: 10 seconds)
(5) +100 Healing Power
(6) 7% of Healing Power is converted to Precision.

((suggestion for new profession-complimentary runes for HoT))

Nike.2631:

…May the stars guide you!…

SUPERIOR RUNES OF THE DRUID

(1) +25 Healing Power
(2) Gain up to 400 Toughness while reviving an ally, based on your level.
(3) +50 Healing Power
(4) After using a healing skill you gain resistance for 3 seconds. (Cooldown: 10 seconds)
(5) +100 Healing Power
(6) 7% of Healing Power is converted to Precision.

Making the rune up or has it been confirmed? if so link!